Dorries won the Conservative candidacy for the safe seat of
Mid Bedfordshire in 2005 on the retirement through ill health after a series of scandals of
Jonathan Sayeed. In 2009, she gave this account of her selection: Dorries's account of her own selection appears to contradict a news report which
The Times ran at the time, reporting that
Conservative Campaign Headquarters placed a majority of women on the shortlist and pressed for the selection of a female candidate: Dorries was elected to the
House of Commons at the
2005 general election with a majority of 11,355, and made her
maiden speech on 25 May 2005. later withdrawing her endorsement. She stated that
David Cameron, the successful candidate, "represented everything that through my life ... [I have] been suspicious of." In May 2007, she criticised Cameron for ignoring the recommendations of the Conservative public policy working group in favour of
grammar schools. However, she did defend the selection of
Liz Truss in 2009, whose Conservative candidature was called into question after an extra-marital affair was revealed. Dorries served as a member of the
Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee, although by November 2008 she had attended only 2% of sessions. The committee then reformed as the Science and Technology Select Committee; she did not attend a single session. In 2010, she was elected to the
Health Select Committee. In May 2008, Dorries featured in the
Channel 4 Dispatches documentary "In God's Name". The programme examined the growing influence of
Christian evangelical movements in the UK and highlighted the
Lawyers' Christian Fellowship's involvement in
lobbying the
British Government on issues such as
abortion,
gay rights and the enforcing of laws relating to
blasphemy. The programme included footage of an LCF representative meeting with Dorries to influence policy on matters where they had a common agenda. Dorries was re-elected in the
2010 general election with an increased majority and a swing of 2.3% from the
Liberal Democrats. In 2013, Dorries's daughter was reportedly among the highest-earning family members employed by MPs with a salary of £40,000–45,000 as an office manager, even though her daughter lived 96 miles away from the office. Subsequently, Dorries's sister was taken on as "senior secretary" with a salary of £30,000–35,000. In reply to an enquiry by Ben Glaze, deputy political editor of the
Daily Mirror, about the employment of her daughter, Dorries tweeted: "Be seen within a mile of my daughters and I will nail your balls to the floor... using your own front teeth. Do you get that?" In October 2013, Dorries described a fellow Conservative MP,
Kris Hopkins, as "one of parliament's slimiest, nastiest MPs" on her
Twitter account, and criticised Prime Minister Cameron's decision to promote Hopkins to a junior ministerial post within the Department for Communities and Local Government as "a really awful decision". On 29 May 2015, the independent candidate in Mid Bedfordshire, Tim Ireland, lodged an appeal against the result accusing Dorries of breaches of Section 106 of the
Representation of the People Act 1983 by making false statements about his character. The development first emerged in early June after the three-week petition for such an action had expired. The petition was rejected by the
High Court of Justice because it was served at Dorries's constituency office and not her home address.
Damian McBride email affair In April 2009, Dorries stated that she had commenced legal action following the leaked publication of emails sent by
Damian McBride,
Prime Minister Gordon Brown's head of strategy and planning, which suggested spreading a rumour that Dorries had a one-night stand with a fellow MP, in an email to
Derek Draper, a Labour-supporting blogger. McBride resigned and Dorries denounced the accusation as
libellous: "[t]he allegations regarding myself are 100 per cent untrue", and demanded an apology Brown subsequently said he was "sorry" and that he took "full responsibility for what happened". Dorries threatened libel proceedings against McBride, Draper and Downing Street but did not carry out that threat. McBride paid Dorries an undisclosed sum, estimated at
£1,000 plus £2,500 towards her costs.
Expenses claims In May 2009,
The Telegraph, as part of its
exposure of MPs' expenses claims, questioned whether the property in Dorries's constituency, on which she claimed £24,222 additional costs allowance (for "secondary" housing costs), had been in fact her main or only home from 2007 onwards. The newspaper also queried hotel bills, including one for 'Mr N Dorries': these had been disallowed by the Fees Office and Dorries said they were submitted by mistake. On 22 May 2009, she spoke on
BBC Radio 4 and drew parallels between the
McCarthy 'Witch-Hunts' and the press's 'drip-drip' revelation of MP's expenses, eliciting Cameron's public criticism. She said everyone was fearing a 'suicide', and colleagues were constantly checking up on each other. Later in the day her blog was taken down. It transpired that
Withers, lawyers acting for the
Barclay Brothers, the owners of the
Daily Telegraph, had required the removal of the blog, on threat of libel action against the service provider. In January 2010, it was reported that Dorries was still being investigated by
John Lyon, the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, regarding her claim for second home expenses. There was some debate as to the location of her main home. It was also reported that Dorries had claimed £20,000 in office expenses for work undertaken by a media relations and public affairs company. Dorries insisted that she had indeed published the report, placing a photograph of it on her blog. She subsequently told the
Biggleswade Advertiser that the report was never printed and a credit note issued with refund on 13 September 2008. On 13 January 2011, it was reported by the
Daily Mirror that police were investigating Dorries concerning her expenses. Three days later,
The Sunday Times reported that police had since handed a file to the
Crown Prosecution Service for consideration. In February 2013, it was reported that Dorries was being investigated by the
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority over her expenses, although no specific details were given at this time. On 27 June 2013, Dorries announced she would no longer claim her personal expenses as an MP, but would draw on her salary for such costs. She argued that she would be in a better position to campaign for the abolition of the present expenses arrangements by doing so. Dorries stood for election as a deputy speaker after one of the three posts became vacant. In the Commons vote during October 2013 she was the first of the six candidates to be eliminated, with 13 votes.
Blog A complaint from the
Liberal Conspiracy website, regarding Dorries's use of the House of Commons' Portcullis emblem on her blog, had been upheld in March 2008, on the basis that Dorries "gave the impression it had some kind of parliamentary endorsement or authority". On 21 October 2010, the MP's standards watchdog criticised Dorries for maintaining a blog which would "mislead constituents" as to how much actual time she was spending in her constituency. Dorries announced: "my blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact! It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to
Mid Bedfordshire. I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another." Referring to her main home being in
Gloucestershire, she said: "I have always been aware that should my personal domestic arrangements become the knowledge of my political opponents, they would be able to exaggerate that to good effect." On 27 October 2010, Dorries partially retracted her 70% fiction claim, posting a blog entry which stated that "It also only takes any individual with a smattering of intelligence to see that everything on the blog is accurate, because it is largely a record of real time events. It was only ever the perception of where I was on any particular day which was disguised." The conservative journalist
Peter Oborne suggested, in his
Daily Telegraph blog a fortnight later, that Cameron should have "ordered Mrs Dorries to apologise personally to her constituents, and stripped her of the party whip there and then".
Visit to Equatorial Guinea with other MPs In August 2011, Dorries led the first delegation of Members of Parliament to
Equatorial Guinea. She met the Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea,
Ignacio Milam Tang. She reportedly said to him: "We are here to dispel some of the myths about Equatorial Guinea and also with humility to offer you help to avoid the mistakes we have made."
Reality TV and temporary suspension Early in November 2012, it was announced that Dorries had agreed to appear on ''
I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!''. Other Conservatives objected to her decision and her constituents were "overwhelmingly negative" on local radio. Neither the Conservative chief whip,
Sir George Young, nor the chairman of the Mid Bedfordshire Conservative Association were informed of her absence from Parliament. The Conservative Party suspended Dorries from the party whip on 6 November, after her confirmation that she was planning to be absent from Parliament. John Lyon, the
Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, received a complaint about her behaviour. The series began on 11 November 2012, but on 21 November, Dorries became the first contestant to be voted off the show. On 27 November Dorries met
Sir George Young, who asked her to rebuild her relationship with the party. She then sat as an independent MP, but continued to deny the
whip had been withdrawn, stating it had merely been suspended. On 8 May 2013, Dorries regained the Conservative whip without any conditions having been applied.
George Osborne reportedly objected to her regaining the parliamentary whip, while commentators speculated that, should she not be readmitted, Dorries might join
UKIP, which had made gains from the Conservatives in the
previous week's local elections.
Peter Oborne observed at this point that Dorries had still not declared the amount she was paid for her appearance on ''I'm a Celebrity...'' in the register of members interests, last published on 22 April, despite her promise to do so. Shortly after regaining the whip, Dorries floated the idea of joint Conservative–UKIP candidates at the next general election in 2015, with herself as such a candidate. "This is not party policy and it's not going to happen", a Conservative Party spokesman told the
Press Association. Following the publication of a report by the
Standards Committee on 11 November 2013, Dorries apologised in the House of Commons to her fellow MPs for two errors of judgement. Her confidentiality agreement with
ITV over her fee for appearing on ''I'm A Celebrity...'' had led to her refusing to disclose the information to
Kathryn Hudson, the parliamentary commissioner for standards. In so doing, she had broken the MP's code of conduct. The all-party standards committee said that she should never have agreed to such a clause in her contract. In addition, Dorries had falsely claimed that payment for eight pieces of work in the media did not need to be declared as they were made to Averbrook, her company, rather than to herself directly.
Brexit In the June 2016
EU referendum, Dorries supported the Leave campaign and was critical of Cameron, who backed Remain. Dorries called for Cameron to resign during the campaign in May 2016, and submitted a letter of no confidence to
Graham Brady, chairman of the
1922 Committee.
BuzzFeed reported that in October 2017 Dorries had become confused about her party's position on
Brexit after talking with a politics teacher about a key element of her party's position, Britain's proposed exit from the
European Union Customs Union. The EU Customs Union is an agreement between EU members not to impose tariffs (i.e. import taxes) on goods passing across their mutual borders. From a semi-private discussion that
BuzzFeed made public, it was suggested that Dorries believed the UK could leave the EU but stay within the Customs Union whilst at the same time negotiating free trade deals with other countries. Later in December 2017 she tweeted: "If we stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union, we haven't left." In November 2018, Dorries, who was strongly in favour of
Brexit, said of the
Withdrawal Agreement negotiated between the UK Government and the
EU27: "This is a very sad place to be, but unfortunately, the future of the country and of our relationship with Europe is at stake. This deal gives us no voice, no votes, no MEPs, no commissioner".
Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health (2019–2021) in 2021 When
Boris Johnson became
prime minister in July 2019, Dorries was appointed as
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health at the
Department of Health and Social Care. She was promoted in May 2020 to the ministerial rank of
Minister of State for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health. On 10 March 2020, Dorries became the first MP to be diagnosed with
COVID-19. It is not known exactly when she contracted the disease, but it was reported that she had attended Parliament and visited 10 Downing Street before being required to self-isolate. On 14 May 2020, Dorries was criticised after she retweeted a doctored video from a far-right
Twitter account which falsely claimed that
Labour leader
Keir Starmer obstructed the prosecution of
grooming gangs while he served as
Director of Public Prosecutions. In November 2020, Dorries attracted media criticism after rejecting an offer of cross-party talks to discuss a mental health support package for frontline NHS and care staff during the
COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2021, she defended the government's 1% NHS pay offer on the grounds that it would protect the financial support of those on
furlough, stating that the "unprecedented" pressure on the UK's finances was behind the pay offer.
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2021–2022) and
Michael Gove at a canalside venue in Birmingham, during the
2022 Commonwealth Games On 15 September 2021, Dorries was promoted as
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport following
Oliver Dowden's appointment as
Conservative Party Co-chairman. She is a critic of what she believes to be
elitism in the
BBC and favoured "BBC reform". In February 2022, amidst a controversy over a joke about
Romani genocide, made by
Jimmy Carr on a
Netflix special, Dorries said that the government would bring in legislation to "hold to account" streaming companies for offensive content. She said there was no disconnect between this view and her previous opinions that "left-wing
snowflakes are killing comedy". In April 2022, Prime Minister Boris Johnson reported that Dorries had personally called
Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at
Facebook’s parent company
Meta, and requested that Facebook remove the video of British journalist
Graham Phillips' interview with
Aiden Aslin. Clegg complied with the request, and removed the video. During her tenure as Secretary of State, Dorries attempted to push through the privatisation of
Channel 4. Her attempts to justify the move received public and industry backlash and at times ridicule, in part due to comments stating that a 2010 reality TV show she took part in had involved paid actors, despite denials from the production company, and having previously incorrectly claimed that the channel was publicly-funded when it is funded by advertising. The privatisation plans were later abandoned by her immediate successor
Michelle Donelan, being seen by some as confirmation that privatisation had been "motivated by political opposition to Channel 4’s output rather than a sound business case". During the
July–September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, Dorries was reported as considering herself as a candidate, but ultimately did not stand and instead endorsed
Liz Truss. In July 2022, Dorries personally granted
Grade II listed status to a plaque of
Cecil Rhodes in
Oxford which she stated was of "special historic interest". This decision was controversial as Rhodes had been labelled the "architect of
apartheid" because he passed laws in the
Cape Colony that expropriated land from black Africans and effectively banned them from political participation. On 9 February 2023, Dorries announced that she would not seek re-election at the next general election, blaming "infighting and stupidity" that led to the
July 2022 government crisis and Johnson's resignation. On 9 June 2023, she announced that she was "standing down" as an MP "with immediate effect", rather than waiting for the next election, which would trigger a
by-election in her constituency. Writing in the
Daily Mail on 12 June 2023, Dorries stated that she believed her removal from the list of
life peerages in
Boris Johnson's resignation honours list had been as a result of a block by "sinister forces". The
House of Lords Appointments Commission had required MPs nominated for peerages to commit to standing down from the Commons within six months or else be omitted from the list. Dorries stated that she had submitted a
subject access request to the House of Lords Appointments Commission and was waiting to resign until she had received all unredacted "WhatsApps, text messages, all emails and minutes of meetings" related to why she was denied a peerage. Dorries was one of ten parliamentarians personally named in a
Commons Select Committee of Privileges special report on the "co-ordinated campaign of interference in the work of the Privileges Committee", published on 28 June 2023. The report detailed how said parliamentarians "took it upon themselves to undermine procedures of the House of Commons" by putting pressure on the
Commons Privileges Committee investigation into Boris Johnson. The statement to stand down immediately and subsequent retraction of that was subject to mounting public criticism throughout the Summer. Within her constituency two town councils published open letters calling on her to resign. Flitwick Town Council wrote to Dorries on 26 July 2023, formally raising the council's concerns and frustration at what it perceived as a continuing lack of representation for the people of Mid Bedfordshire at Westminster. Representing over 13,800 voters, the council cited Dorries's recent poor voting record in the House of Commons and alleged that Dorries had not held a surgery in
Flitwick since 7 March 2020. The council signed off the letter: "Our residents desperately need effective representation now, and Flitwick Town Council calls on you to immediately vacate your seat to allow a by-election." On 17 August Shefford Town Council also called on her to resign, criticising the "continuing lack of representation for the people of Mid Bedfordshire" due to a lack of participation within the community or at Westminster. Within the wider political world criticism came from within her own party and others. Prime Minister
Rishi Sunak's press secretary stated that "It’s obviously unusual to have an MP say they will resign with immediate effect and for that not to take place" while Sunak himself later publicly stated that "I think people deserve to have an MP that represents them, wherever they are". Several Conservative MPs also publicly criticised her for continuing as an MP despite her statements about resigning. Meanwhile members of both the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats publicly called on her to resign and announced they would seek to force her out via parliamentary means if she didn't formally resign. On 24 August, Dorries responded to the growing criticism, releasing a statement stating that she and her caseworkers were "working daily with constituents". She also claimed that the criticism concerning her conduct and associated calls to resign were down to "political opponents, such as Labour-run Flitwick town council are choosing the summer and news-hungry outlets in the summer recess to be noted". In a letter to Sunak published on 26 August, Dorries explicitly signified her resignation as an MP while criticising his administration, accusing him of abandoning the "fundamental principles of Conservatism" and "opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs". In response to her resignation letter, Conservative MP
Sir Robert Neill stated that Dorries had "become an embarrassment" and that her claims "were obviously motivated by personal bitterness and bile".
Tobias Ellwood referred to the manner of her departure as a "selfish charade" and an "undignified chapter ... an episode of colleagues throwing their teddies in the corner, in this case for simply not getting a peerage". On 29 August, Dorries was appointed to the position of
Steward and Bailiff of the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, thereby vacating her seat in the Commons. The
ensuing by-election in Mid Bedfordshire, held on 19 October, was won by
Alistair Strathern of the Labour Party, with the largest Conservative majority overturned by Labour in a by-election since 1945. == After Parliament ==